Your Right to Know

The state won’t keep secrets about lions, tigers and bears it may keep locked up at an
exotic-animals holding facility in Reynoldsburg.

If asked, the Ohio Department of Agriculture will disclose what animals are being kept at the
new $2.9 million, 17,920-square-foot Dangerous Wild Animal Temporary Holding Facility at 8995 E.
Main St. There are no animals there now.

“If we are asked for public information, we will provide it,” said department spokeswoman Eric
Hawkins. “We fill public-information requests all the time.”

Hawkins said some members of the news media who toured the facility last week misunderstood
Agriculture Director David Daniels’ response to a question about public notification regarding
animals at the holding facility. Daniels said the state would not notify neighbors and other
interested parties when animals are brought in. However, he did not say the state would deny public
inquiries, she said.

“It is common practice not to announce movement of animals for the safety of the public and the
animals,” Hawkins said.

Daniels has acknowledged there is greater concern about someone who might try to break into the
facility rather than animals escaping.

There are several levels of security, including a surveillance camera to snap pictures and
instantly send them in an email to five different people in the state agency, heavy steel cages
with padlocks, an interior gate, a double metal exterior wall, and a 12-foot fence extending 18
inches into the ground with a 4-foot cantilever topped by electrified wire.

The structure was built to accommodate animals seized by the state or surrendered by owners
because of a new Ohio law restricting ownership and sale of a wide range of exotic animals. While
the law doesn't take effect until Jan. 1, owners of animals on the extensive restricted-species
list had to register their critters with the state by Nov. 5. About 150 owners registered 831
animals, but that includes zoos.

The law was passed after Terry W. Thompson, of near Zanesville, released his menagerie of exotic
animals before committing suicide in October 2011. Forty-eight animals, including lions, tigers and
bears, were killed after they left their cages.